At two-thirty in the morning the epidemiologists came.

They knocked on an apartment door in Shanghai.

When the 94-year-old resident didn't answer, they just broke the door open.

The old lady had tested positive for the corona virus more than a week ago and showed hardly any symptoms.

Nevertheless, now, in the middle of the night and against her will, she was to be taken to a nursing home that had been converted into a quarantine center.

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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At least that's how her granddaughter Zhiye, a journalist from Shanghai, describes it.

“My grandmother refused to go.

At that time she was still in bed,” the granddaughter wrote on the Weibo network.

The epidemiologists would have dragged her grandmother to the ground with the blanket to take her away.

Zhiye's uncle, who was also at the home, eventually urged his mother to cooperate, fearing that she might get hurt otherwise.

According to the uncle, the quarantine center to which they were taken was so overcrowded that many of the older people had to wait in the corridors.

Outrageous reports about the corona measures in Shanghai have been circulating on the internet for weeks.

Recently, there has been an increase in cases in which particularly old and frail people are being shipped to quarantine centers.

An exception rule, according to which such people could previously apply for home quarantine, has apparently been abolished.

This may be the price for the easing announced by the Shanghai city government on Wednesday.

According to this, another four million residents are now allowed to leave their apartments because no new infections have been reported in their districts.

There was a similar easing last week for almost eight million Shanghainese.

This does not say how far their freedom extends.

In many cases, the permitted range of motion is still severely restricted.

For almost half of the inhabitants of the 25 million metropolis there is still a strict ban on going out.

There is still a long way to go before the lockdown is lifted.

The local government tried to spread optimism on Wednesday.

For the first time, the virus is "effectively under control" in two districts of the city, said Wu Ganyu, an employee of the health commission.

This was only made possible by changing the parameters for success.

The goal in Shanghai is no longer “zero Covid” but “zero Covid in society”.

If all those who tested positive are housed in quarantine centers and new infections only occur there with isolated contact persons and no longer “in society”, a district is considered virus-free.

This shifted bar could be the reason why exceptions are no longer made for the elderly and the infirm.

Call for civil disobedience

The son of a 93-year-old former professor at East China University of Science and Technology wrote on Wednesday that his parents had had their home quarantine special permit revoked, citing new regulations.

Both were picked up on Tuesday at half past one in the morning.

The authorities may have been in a hurry to clean up their statistics before the easing was announced on Wednesday.

The professor's son, Lv Jian, reported indignantly that his 90-year-old mother was bedridden and forgot her medication in the excitement of the forced evacuation.

In the isolation center she was taken to, a converted school, there is no medical care whatsoever.

Cases like these are fueling the anger of those trapped in Shanghai and raising calls for civil disobedience.

The local government felt compelled on Tuesday to urge the public to cooperate.

Apparently, many residents refuse to be transported to quarantine centers or participate in mass tests.

An elderly woman received a lot of encouragement on Wednesday when she fought back against an epidemiologist who tried to prevent her from leaving an isolation facility with a broom.